The walls are up and painted. The tiles are down and grouted. The appliances are in and plugged. The furniture is bought and on its way. August 1, 2016, we move back in to the little shack we call Sawmyl Synders and pickup, more or less, where we left off. I say less because we have less animals than we did before the flood on the farm – a lot less. I say more because we have more weeds, more broken equipment, and more doubt about the future on this farm than before the creek became a river and carried part of my life downstream. Yes, mud had smothered my possessions and with it a great deal of my hope. However, I was forced to pull many things from the muddy path of Mother Nature’s wrath, and the mementos which I lifted and kept and dried are the priceless objects will kindle new hope. I don’t remember my life as being in any way remarkable but these souvenirs and awards and digests and diaries do remind me that I had a life that went from hopeless to hopeful to happy. I say I’m unhappy now. I can tell you that I was happier before the flood, bringing so many revelations in its wake. About the people in my life. About the strangers outside my life. About the incomplete person I have become. Living life between the two. How will I spend my remaining time while waiting for the great snake of a creek – just beyond my back door – to rise fifteen feet and once again lap away at my life?

I have sketch books, scrap books, and conspiracy books. I have musings on paper, collections in journals, and opinions on my blog. These transcribed brainwaves are of varying degrees of incompleteness and incompetence. I plan on gathering them, separating them, and transforming them into the very best of expression in writing that I am capable. Yes, I know this task is impossible for me now. No, I do not think that the word ‘best’ applies to how others may assess my craft. Maybe, the result will be a ‘better’ me that faces this challenging and frustrating world. Perhaps, some ‘good’ will come of it, what good I have no idea. But if I remain who I am – a too timid person relating to others in a too intense way in a much too complex world – I must pursue this calling that is both beyond my capacity and within my comprehension. What instruments will I need to add to my skimpy ill-fitting author’s tool-belt in order to follow my dream and lead me to intangible but everlasting mementos?

The Eye that detects the important things in a manuscript is the Eye I’m looking for. Yes, everyone has a story they think should be written. Only a very few people have the ability to make that story interesting. Many factors go into making a good story interesting, coherent, and memorable. Certainly grammar and tense and punctuation are necessary but they are neither the end all or a perfected tool in a writer’s repertoire. It takes a village to help one start to write well. It takes a large part of a lifetime to learn to write well. It takes courage to keep writing. The obstacles to being an author are like others in any profession but the profession of an author is an obstacle to being like others.

John Hinckley will be released from a mental hospital August 5, 2016. You know that he was sentenced to be held in that hospital as a result of someone attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. You also know that Hinckley’s obsession with Jodie Foster was a basis for finding him not guilty by reason of insanity. If you read Wikipedia, you also know that Hinckley is featured as a central character of Stephen Sonheim’s musical Assassins. Additionally, you could find out that American new wave band Devo recorded a song “I Desire”…which brought the brought the band controversy because the lyrics were taken directly from a poem written by Hinckley.

Other things you should know – if you read beyond the headlines and Wikipedia. The father, John Warnock Hinckley, Sr., was president of World Vision United States. The gunman’s father was also a multi-millionaire Texas oilman and President and Chairman of the independent oil and gas exploration firm Vanderbilt Energy Corporation. What was rarely if ever reported was that Hinckley Sr. was a major financial contributor to the failed 1980 Presidential campaign of the Vice President, George H.W. Bush. Hinckley’s older brother, Scott, had a dinner date scheduled at the home of Neil Bush, the Vice President’s son, the day after the assassination attempt on Reagan. A March 31, 1981 news headline by Associated Press confirmed this: Bush Son Had Dinner Plans With Hinckley Brother Before Shooting. George H.W. Bush’s other son, George W. Bush, also admitted to journalists that he may have had dealings with Scott Hinckley who was Vice-President of Vanderbilt Energy, but could not remember either way.

Honda sent us a recall letter which stated that we should not sit in the front seat while driving until repairs are made. The recall has been announced for 6 months. They did not offer a rental car. The only way for a customer to get a rental car, even after Honda explains the possible danger of this auto defect, is for the customer to ask.

Chick-fil-A has changed their menu – but only on the inside of the “Restaurant”. The drive-thru still has the old menu without the new items and, therefore, with the old numbers. The other day, we ordered from the old drive-thru menu. The voice over the intercom told us the menu had changed and described what the new “number 7” item was. We ordered the old items by reading the description instead of giving the number. We still got the new “number 7”.

State Farm Insurance is my home insurance carrier. I have flood insurance which arranged through my carrier but paid to FEMA. My flood claim is handled by FEMA, not State Farm. State Farm has told me that all FEMA related questions and issues should be addressed to FEMA only. My FEMA adjuster told me to ask a question of my carrier, State Farm. When I called State Farm, the receptionist, at first tried to find someone who could help. A few minutes later, the receptionist came back to the phone and told me all agents had gone to lunch together, and I would be called back when they returned. I was never called back. It was 11 a.m. in the morning. The office opened at 9 a.m.

My cardiologist office called on Monday and left a message that I had an appointment on Wednesday. This was an old appointment which I had cancelled the last time I was in the office. The reason for cancelling was that I did not trust the cardiologist or the office. The reason I did not trust the cardiologist is that she tried to put me on statins in a sneaky way, a nuclear stress test was misread and she guessed at the reason, the call for the nuclear stress test was prompted by a AAA and a bad lipid panel. The reason I don’t trust the cardiologist office is that the made mistakes in each and every document that was recorded, the PA stated that the nuclear stress test showed a “heart attack”, they told me they don’t do re-reads (even though they admit to mis-reading the test) and the office sent a different test result to my primary care physician than they sent to me.

My primary care physician would not assist when I called to ask them to help me get my cardiologist to re-read. The only option the office gave me was to schedule, endure, and pay for another test with a different physician. My primary care physician would not see me without another scheduled and paid for appointment which would not result in any assistance in getting another nuclear stress test read.

My health insurance carrier said I could file a grievance against the cardiologist. After much talk and waiting. The carrier called and said the grievance had been resolved appropriately. I was told that, by law, they could not tell me the resolution. However, they would not re-read my nuclear stress test. If I wanted a good reading, I would have to pay for it.

The postscript here is that all of my medical treatment since that time has been outside my health insurance and their second tier physicians. I gave my nuclear stress test CD to a relative who took it to the hospital where she works and had it read correctly by a cardiologist there. When I cut my hand severely during the flood cleanup, I consulted another relative who is a physician. I am a veteran and went to the VA for confirmation that there is nothing wrong with my heart and there was no need for a stress test, let alone echo-cardiogram. Even the physician who did my colonoscopy raised his eyebrows when I told him I had stress test and the reasons. This cardiologist was simply pushing drugs and procedures because that’s the only thing insurance pays for. My health insurance supplement through Health Spring is FREE! But now I know the truth. Free health insurance is having no insurance.

This is a review of an editorial by Laura Moe on the Creative Nonfiction website Issue #12, 1999. The article is titled, “About the Author: Leaf Seligman”. I found each paragraph quotable and this led me to change my thoughts for the day and write about this article.

Leaf Seligman: The very best creative nonfiction tells us about stuff we never would have known about. This quote grabbed me because I am used to having my own true life commentaries interrupted by those who state the obvious. There will always be greater and lesser, it goes without saying, so why should I be preempted because someone else has story that is more extreme or tragic than my own current dilemma? The answer is that people want attention. All of us want attention. But the antidote to loneliness isn’t talking about yourself. Listen!

Leaf Seligman: We all have stories in us that need to be written, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be read. This one threw me for a loop. At first, I wondered if this was just rhetorical language but I need to give it a chance. If her words are taken at face value with no interpolation or assumptions, what could possibly need to be recorded for posterity but not ever read by anyone? I’m thinking it is the thing we want most forgotten but which must be forever remembered. The thing that broke us, hurt us, made us give up all hope. Of course if we are still able to write about them then we were not broken but mended, not hurt but helped, not forsaken but saved. These are the things that need to be written down for posterity but we might reluctantly read for fear of an emotional unwrap.

You can’t make art out of pain on the same day. I thought about this one. When you are savoring the fruits of survival on a breezy overlook with a cool drink and a fresh friend, these are not the result of wise choices or great luck. There is an old-you that died and decayed and descended and you have grown out of that death and decomposition. Hallelujah! That overlook would not be possible without the underworld of terror you went through in your transformation from lost lamb to reigning ram. Know that every lost pursuit had a foundering purpose and that the person you were pursuing will eventually be the person you will become – if you remember your path.

If you want to be a better prose writer, write as much poetry as you can, and likewise. I like this because I like poetry. Well, aphorisms and lyrics and rhymes. No one has accused me of writing legitimate poetry but there are people who wish I would stop. Sometimes I take a thought or a thought from a poem, and expand it in a poetic many. For me this is a way to get to the essence of the thought. Once I have arrive at an essence that rings true to my sentiments, then I can go back an work on the prose the will expand and detail it. Give it life here on earth in simple words that began with ethereal poetry.

All that matters is… how you remember it. OK, another tough one. This quote, I think, has to do with what reality taught you, not what reality did. Can you feel me? It doesn’t matter whether your midget race car was red with white wheels or white with red wheels, but it does matter that you raced until you eighty pounds too heavy to fit into the cockpit and that you met your first love at the race track and when you both outgrew your individual cockpits you fell out of those stressed and straining vehicles and fell into each others groping and grasping arms. Falling in love always involves a falling out if your life is at all on track.

Sometimes it takes other people to tell you what your writing is about. Amen here. I have been perfectly thrilled with my writing until a barely attentive writing group pointed out that I had used all three tense in three consecutive sentences. That I had head-hopped to the extent no knew who killed, screwed, lied to who. That my subtext had taken my readers to a very different place than I intended – a very disturbing and disgusting place which said more about me than I wanted to know. Have someone look at your stuff, not just for grammar, but for lucidity. Trust me on this. Don’t listen to the rare geniuses who don’t need editors.

I would not have gotten better as a writer without people saying “Ok, Leaf this does work, but this doesn’t.” Again, genuine criticism is gold. It goes without saying that quick criticism is almost always interpolation if not jealousy. If the criticism rings true, put it in your pocket. If it wrings you, tell them to stuff it.

“When I read my early work, I realize they were really broth, not stew. It’s really humbling and gratifying to reread something six months later and see how you could make it better.” I with her. So was Shakespeare. Taking something that was already written in the past and making it better is almost guaranteed. You have matured and learned and perfected. Look back and do the same for your prose.

“Whatever is most pressing will scratch at the door and it will tell you when to let it in, and out. Write what compels you most and find the time and space to do it. Make everything you write a love letter to the world.” Ain’t that the truth. Someone’s scratching at your door? Creative Nonfiction? Someone’s ringin’ your bell? Absurdism? Do me a favor. Let ’em in.

Without describing the details of yesterday’s events, how would you name the feelings which emoted from them? Especially, pointedly, involving others. For me, some of the names for yesterday’s emotions would include simple joy, unexpected alarm, necessary concern, and simmering anger. How does an event get it’s emotional name? Should there be a unique name that is not adjectival? When will the emotion expire or transform? If one is going to remember events which inspire emotions then it is a curious mind that wants to name those event triggered feelings.

Simple joy. When expectation and judgement are absent from the events that warm the heart and give pleasure, one has a dessert for the day no matter the time. It seems to me that such an event deserves a term more notable than joy. More distinguishing than simple joy. Less dismissive than dreary happy. I’m going to choose beatitude even though I don’t have a full understanding of what that word means. It is heading in the right direction. There I’ve taken an emotion I can’t describe and chosen a name for it that I don’t fully understand. Let’s go on shall me.

At the end of the work day, I experienced alarm, concern, and anger in quick succession. Alarm can be a product of expectation gone awry or a sudden reality that forces a response. I’m liking discompose and consternation here. Discompose because it reminds me of how my frame of mind decomposes with the rearing of the death’s head of the alarming event. I like consternation because I can see the stern dead eyes flashing back at me and telling me something I don’t yet discern but that certainly concerns me. Dis-stern might be it if it were a word.

OK, so following unexpected alarm is necessary concern. Is it me? Is it my understanding? Is it time to stiffen up and fight? The concern I’m referring to is not the caring type of concern but the what’s-going-on type. Do you feel me? It’s the concern you find at the crossroads of nervous and caution. When standing at this intersection, you know that you might be about to be run over or that the ride you were expecting is never going to show. In any case, I’m not sure if the name for this necessary concern exists. It seems appropriate that the word have an X in it. Let’s take vexation or anxiety. X marks the spot on your daily emotions path where vexation and anxiety meet. Be it Vexiety or anxiation – you know it when you feel it.

When the simmering anger starts, it won’t be stopped until it either boils over or the heat is turned down. Rarely does the heat get turned down because this requires two people to join hands with one mind. Disapprobation descends when dissatisfaction surfaces. If dissatisfaction is purely one sided then the other side is blind sided. Misunderstanding is the kindling for this meeting of unhappy souls. Unless communication can occur, these two D’s will continue to heat up. An intermediary who has a mutual interest can sometimes intervene. Rarely do I see both sides of anger equally satisfied. Often I see partings which are unfortunate because of one or the other or both attaching to anger. Dis- and mis- go hand in hand and seldom detach from their better halves of approbation and understanding.

I have to go. I have a bright new rooster in a dark old shed protected from a mean old cat. It’s time to get things clucking here. Up and away from Imperial to Sawmyl Synders Farm.

I’m not through talking about my flood experience – not by a long shot. Yesterday I realized, as I was leaving my crew of workers in the afternoon, that three of the most vilified segments of our population are the three that showed up in my hour of need. The media onslaught at these groups rails relentless and pours all members into the same disparaging bucket. The uninformed, unemployed, and unhinged jump on the bandwagon of loud rhetoric and condescending attitudes. Even though each of the impugned categories of human beings sits accused of heinous crimes against the rest of us, they never give up and they continue to press on and they always show up. Who am I talking about?

Who will be there AFTER the shit hits the fan?

The Federal Government, in general, for one. The Department of Homeland Security more specifically. FEMA exactly, showed up on the Saturday after my flood, just one day after my flood, and started my claim. It’s amazing to me that a department of our government had a physical person on site, my disaster site, immediately and while storms were still pounding us and street lights were out and roads were closed. The adjuster accommodated me, when I was late arriving at my own crash site, by rearranging his visits. The adjuster did 90% of the work getting my claim started by taking pictures which could be translated into a possessions list. Over the next few days, the adjuster picked up the phone each time I called. Additionally, I received money from the FEMA Disaster group which set up an office near my house. They came out, took notes, and approved a rental assistance check the next day. Big government will never change but it fortunately changed me by being there.

Big government is the enemy until you need a friend.

Waiting in the wings was the Church. The Christian Church. The Episcopal Church in the name of St. Isidore. The Warden texted me after the flood, asking about my welfare. I texted back that I was deluged. He asked what the church could do. I was skeptical that they could do anything, would do anything. After the fellow FEMA left, St. Isidore arrived and they did do something. A small group came and did what the no-show remediation companies were supposed to do. The professionals never showed up. The for-profit companies never called. But there was the unsolicited, not-for-profit St. Isidore. By Memorial Day 2016, all the soggy furniture was on the lawn, the bottom four feet of sheet-rock was cut cleared, and the clammy carpet was pulled out, rolled up, and thrown down with the rest of the steaming mess on my messy front lawn. Then, like a vision of angels, they were gone! Gone until three weeks later when they were back in force, two dozen, who went through the house and yard to assist with the massive cleanup of the house grounds, garage, barn, animal buildings and pastures. I may never be a Christian but I will from now on be a believer.

I don’t believe in God but I love him/her.

Following FEMA and the fellowship came the fellows who nobody seems to want, the immigrants. They came in after everybody left and are with me to this day. Father and son working side by side, putting insulation in the walls, covering it with sheet-rock, painting it with a double coat, and then tiling the entire house. Yesterday, wife and daughter arrived to begin an intense scrubbing.

None of us deserve anything and I certainly didn’t deserve this. I am not bitter about fate’s flood, or friend and family’s absence, probably to a great extent, because of these three groups who showed up when I was in need.

The shit will hit the fan one day for each of us. Who will be standing with you then? Look around. How did you refer to your saviors before the deluge? How now? Custom love is my nomenclature.

I’ve had the most interesting encounters while recovering from my recent flood disaster. The other day I took my work crew of two out to lunch at Kitty’s. Last week, I was introduced to this Magnolia family restaurant by my third electrician Rick (who eats for free!). Anyway, sitting next to us, I recognized the fellas who started the aquaponics business around the corner from my place. Without an invitation, I moved my chair around on our spacious table so I could better talk to them. I started by telling them I remembered chatting with them, each of the two, about this same time last year while visiting their newly opened business. My wife and I bought their vegetables and toured their facility from dark catfish tank to green floating gardens. I told them we were flooded last May and were now fixing up. I knew their aquaponics business had been closed for almost a year and wondered what was happening with their endeavor.

Just when you least expect it, just what you least expect.

In turns out that they were flooded, too. An aquaponics business can flood too, you know. They said that they were selling that section of their property, which I knew because of the realtor sign out front. For flooding reasons, they were moving the business to higher ground on an adjacent tract of land. Hey, that’s my idea. All new businesses have their startup problems, duh. These guys have had theirs. Neither had been shy in, our prior conversations, in talking about their foray into mistakes and calamities…but only the big ones. If there was a big decision to be made, they made it – and quickly. With disastrous results. Either immediately or when Mother Nature came to town with her fearsome and weathered spring baggage. Expensive and continual bad decisions they be. Torrential and devastating weather hammering poorly designed facilities on a vulnerable site. They had it all when it came to misfortune. So what should they do? They have decided to start up again on higher dryer ground with greater faith with less reason to believe that the Lord would guide them – this time. But the biggest change is that they are going to offer to spread the grief. They are going to market custom aquaponics packages for the general populous . It’s not just all in the family any more. This spread the grief idea, they tell me, was always part of their business plan. The wealth part is still more aspiration than inspiration.

There’s a fool born every minute.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own experience with another entrepreneur who was determined to “Never Give Up”. The Great Persecutor – as I like to now characterize him – had gone through life, my life and others, abusing and harming and blaming his problems on each of his victims, from siblings to parents to spouses to children to business associates. Have I left anyone out? As a lifestyle, this behavior must have been fulfilling to him short term, but had left him with no long term relationships. When he literally fell victim to fate, bad luck, or his own irresponsible behavior he, for a short intermission, acknowledged to himself that he might be doing something wrong. But as soon as he was healed, literally, either physically or emotionally, he was back to his old blame game. How could he change his behavior so that he would be happy without giving up on the persecution of all others? He found the answer – in one of those rare down times of self pity where he was seeking guidance out of his latest misfortune – when he employed a life coach. That life coach got him going and soon he was a dynamo of destruction delivered. Except that soon he realized he was better and more capable than that stupid life altering life coach. That was it, the missing piece in his life’s perverted puzzle. He would keep all of his previous behavior PLUS add life coach to his resume. Harshly telling individuals what they were doing wrong while expensively charging by the session would seem to be the up and coming profession for someone who looked down on everyone. He was an expert, a lifelong expert, on persecuting the weak and this was the resolution to all of his raw talent. With this fabricated, though corrupted, Life Coach idea, his bad temperament could be parlayed into good dollars by simple marketing. His much maligned mama, while helplessly watching her oldest son pulverize the younger ones, always knew he would become some thing. He’d be a Life Coach.

Some day you’ll find a way to make your natural tendencies pay.

With all of the cynicism I can muster, I reflect on these two stories of others trudging on in spite of seeming congenital failure. If at first you don’t succeed, package your failure and market it as success. Rather than doing it the way I have done . I have failed myself, others, and the world on many occasions, with a little help from my friends, family and Mother Naturem occasionally. However, on this occasion, the difference between me and the born again Aquapond-ers and the died in the wool-over-your-eyes Life Coachers is that I recognized some of my limitations (without recognizing all of them) and also recognized the long learning curve of self-transformation and its elongated timeline (without ever accurately predicting its length).

Aptitude can get you a career but it doesn’t necessarily get you a life.

Never Give Up by necessity, sometimes becomes Never Again.

Sometimes the safety of the known keeps you from knowing.

Letting Go allows Life to Go On.

If the hardest thing in life is to see one’s faults, than the easiest thing to do is to see where life is hardest.

Becoming becomes righting wrongs.

The dead season of winter silently remembers the seasons past in order that a new spring will bring full growth for life’s next harvest.

It’s been over a month since the deluge on the night of Thursday, May 26th. It is now July 5th. What did I do? What did I write. What’s next? My blog entry for May 26th, hours before the flood, was titled The Tao: Seeing Path, Polarity, and Pattern in Today’s Events. Mind you this is before the flood.

My thoughts on the subject of Path touch on current controversial topics, touching first on Second Amendment rights, the future rumble of crumbling infrastructure, empty calories sold cheaply, cheap textiles emptied into rich countries made fully by slave labor, and burgeoning poverty in a country of bludgeoning wealth. The clouds moving in considered my rights subservient; our crumbling infrastructure a mere morsel; those empty calories a trite consideration, our excess clothing, while cheap textiles, would soon be wet absorbents; and the country’s poverty and wealth to be nearly the same in the eye of the storm. Water always seeks the path of least resistance. Water when filling the ten foot banks of a creek, twelve inches in two hours, rises from eight inches to fifteen feet in two hours. Water, when you are standing over it, may be looked down upon at dusk but will have you on your knees before you can say, “Syndee, we gotta get outa here.”

On May 27th, I wrote a morose piece titled the difficulties of genuine friendship. The three paragraphs were written in third person, a thinly veiled reflection of an old man who came to an ugly spot in a pretty town to build a homely farm on a scarred land. A devastating flash flood wiped five years of toil away, brought him not to pity but wonder at why he attempted this endeavor. Some how, he concluded, it was done for approval. Even though he was mostly alone, occasionally he would be with company and listen to others who would drone on about their stagnant past or current impasse. He sat and listened – listening for approval. Somehow, he hoped his father would listen and he would hear his approval, too.

This study of the May 27th article will be longer than the piece itself. It takes a lot to get one to admit to a lie, even a small one, a partial one, one that only harms oneself. But mother nature’s waterboarding can bring the most dedicated liar to tell the truth about himself. Piling dead animals into plastic barrels for feasting maggots does something to one’s poor phony posture, unless of course that is one’s chosen vocation. Sitting in rising stench, waiting for Help to justify whether to show, with standing water smelling the sweetness in the air of the next storm, which will arrive on schedule, the flood victim is forced to think how he got here – but quickly! Remembering accomplishments, small and large, which are now downstream; looking at the crooked path the phases of this farm took; feeling the joy of victory and the agony of defeat, in turn, as the breeze turns the now high grass from sheen to dull, from hope to despair. It could be that this old guy felt in his stomach the nausea of descent into hopelessness. Yet, he did not. There was some reason that this deluge brought exciting hope on its cruel waves. New possibilities with the beliefs of strangers who showed up with genuine faith. Considerable potential brought to a place where potential for flourishing was fading. Consider the possibilities and the potential.

On May 30th I wrote Feelings After the Flood. I feel nothing I blogged. True in the sense of understanding or acknowledging my feelings at that time. I did reveal my paradox for stoic posturing with pain and emotional vulnerability to compassion. I paid homage to Mother Nature and undeniable need to look at the future with a more focused lenses. My tactics got me an egg business, some holiday turkeys, a lesson in goat worm-ology, and great vegetables and greater weeds watered by a flood of sweat. The flood was a sign. A sign for change. A change that will be great but that will leave none of the great people in my life behind. Though some people will have to be left behind. When Mother Nature is seeming to be apathetic toward you, she is actually giving you time to prepare for her wrath. When you are sitting bored in your recliner on a rainy night, she might be measuring the distance her flood will have to rise to wet your lazy ass. The knocking outside your door may not be the Mother coming for you. But it might. Will you find high ground before She does? Do you hate the rain so much you think you can hide from the following waves? If you are carried away, where do you suppose She will deposit you. Do you deserve it?